1??????????Soul Bound
1.2????????Taking Control
1.2.3??????An Enchanting Original
1.2.3.6????Cooking mastery
She was saved by the arrival of Bungo, who distracted them by asking about vineyards, local soils, and which drinks sold best. It sounded like he was compiling a ‘good food guide’ for new adventurers and intended to go on a pub crawl through every tavern in Torello.
Transforming Wellington’s diagram from an orglife overlay into ingredients carefully laid out on the pizza took quite a while as he’d made it recursive, each feature echoed again on a smaller and smaller scale. Eventually she decided it was good enough, and she’d make up the difference by visualising strongly when she channelled mana into it. Though come to think of it, she wasn’t very strong in Rac or Lun. Could she do that part after the cooking, and make it a group casting so she could draw on Bungo’s air and Bulgaria’s shadow?
Columbina came over to inspect it, and Kafana asked her.
Columbina: “You focus too much on the magic. You’ll never become a great cook that way. This, it will taste ok, but it looks like a mage designed it, not an artist. You are limiting yourself. If you are going to add magic, find a way to be more subtle. It should be subservient to the gastronomic experience, not the master.”
Bungo: {Is that a fractal? I wonder how small it goes. Could you put little runes on the proteins themselves?}
Kafana: {Hmm. Good question. I focussed in very tightly when examining some troll flesh yesterday. Maybe I could use my ingredient improvement skill to draw runes?}
Alderney: {Rudolfo thinks that’s why we can’t replicate many of the items from ancient times. They knew how to add structure at the crystal level, that we can’t even see.}
Wellington: {Johannes uses prisms to scan small scale structure, but he’s limited by the quality of the crystal available. It’ll add it to my ‘experiment with this’ list. Inscribing each small part of an item would take far too long. You’d need a way to set one part as the template and have the rest copy any changes made to it. Or maybe...} his words trailed off.
Tomsk stepped in, to revive the conversation before Columbina got annoyed at them for standing around looking blank.
Tomsk: “I asked Lelio about mastery. He said that, to become a Master Swordsman, you have to win a fair fight against an opponent deemed worthy by at least three High Master Swordsmen. What’s the equivalent for cooks?”
Columbina: “You hold a feast for all the top chefs in the city. They can each order any dish they like, as long as they give sufficient advance notice. You receive no payment in advance, though, and your sponsor must keep a strict account of every coin you spend on purchasing ingredients. At the end of the meal, each chef pays only what they think a customer would pay for food of that quality. If they don’t like it, they don’t pay anything. If you make a profit on the evening, and most of them paid more than the ingredients cost, you’re a master.”
Tomsk: “That sounds a lot easier than putting your life on the line.”
Columbina: “Ha! For my feast, one bitch ordered steak of Scandic leviathan and Gombardo white truffles with saffron from the Iberian Palatinate. The monster had to be kept on ice for an entire two week voyage from Lilleheim by the fastest carrack available. I had to bribe the captain. The cost was ruinous. If I’d made even a single mistake while preparing it, I’d have been in debt for years, and I’d never cooked it before. Nobody in Torello had.”
Bungo: “Couldn’t you have just fed her a jam sandwich and made your profit from the others?”
Columbina: “And give her the satisfaction? Please, I have my pride. Besides, she was a rival of my patron. I couldn’t let Signora down.”
Kafana checked the event queue then put her pizza into a wide stone oven. Everyone was due in five minutes, which would just give time for them all to get seated before the pizza was ready. She set a reminder, and pinged it for everybody’s attention. If casting the magic afterwards didn’t work, it would still be a good meal, and that’s what mattered. She asked Passionata to have it sent up to the balcony table when ready, uncut.
Tomsk: “We’ve an appointment this afternoon at Signora Moda, to return the dress she lent to Kafana, and possibly pick up some new clothes for ourselves.”
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Columbina clenched her fists to her chest then threw them wide, palms open. “Finally! Tomsk, you must promise to get something fitting, so I can put you out at the public tables where your fine figure can be seen and envied by all, rather than squirrelled away on my balcony like a nut being saved for winter.”
Tomsk teased her: “You are sure you won’t be embarrassed to be seen with me?”
Columbina: “I will cut the eyes out of anyone who is rude. They will learn to be polite to you, after just two or three trips to the Sanctum.”
From her face, Kafana couldn’t tell whether Columbina was joking or not. She’d said it matter-of-factly.
Tomsk considered a moment. “While that’s not exactly against the law, unless they are noble and you are not, the watch tends to frown upon that sort of thing if you don’t declare it to be a formal duel, or doing so breaks an ordinance such as obstructing commerce, damage to property or littering.”
Columbina, still dead-pan: “I will be sure to pay the cleaning costs for their clothes, and dispose of the eyes without littering.”
Bungo: “Really?”
Columbina winked, and sashayed off to oversee the kitchen, with a bit of extra sway in her step for Tomsk’s benefit, who watched her departing rear with appreciation.
Passionata: “Oh yes, Torello isn’t like Mezelay or Kalzburg. We’re big on summary justice here. Laws written down by the council are mainly to do with commerce and taxation. They justified tacking on a clause about ‘threats to the city’ on the basis that having everyone die from invasion or disease would make trade difficult. Everything else gets handled by each count how they see fit, though unsurprisingly they usually ‘see fit’ to let guilds resolve matters involving their members or areas of expertise. Nobody wants to annoy the priests or mages.”
Kafana turned to Passionata: “That’s terrible! So if someone stronger beat you up, you couldn’t do anything about it? You couldn’t report the criminal to the Watch?”
Passionata: “I could report it, and they could choose to enact summary justice on the spot, just like anybody could, but they wouldn’t have to, and might get reprimanded for wasting time, or even get into serious trouble if the person turned out to be important. So they probably wouldn’t, unless the particular watch patrol liked me or owed me a favour.”
Tomsk nodded.
Passionata: “I could hire a private mercenary, thief taker, assassin or just a bunch of locals from down the tavern to do it for me, but they’d run the same risks. And if a count found out and decided I was a troublemaker, I might get kicked out of the city, or at least banned from their district.”
Passionata: “But mainly? As a commoner, I’d either risk telling my count’s guard or put up with it.”
Kafana: “That’s risky?”
Passionata shrugged. “Depends on the district. Centrale is very good, and the Watch takes on many of the functions of a count’s guard here in return for not paying rent on the Watchtower. Libri is pretty safe, and they use magic on the bridges to enforce bans. Mercato is ok, though you don’t want to waste the guard’s time if you’re not paying rent or other taxes, and they’ll charge you double the price of the investigation if they decide you are in the wrong. In Basso, the count’s guards are little more than thugs, and in Arsenal the thugs are the guards.”
Bungo: “What about Alto?”
Passionata: “I’ve never been there. You don’t get in without a pass token or your family being listed in the book of gold which traces the ancestry of the nobility. Everything’s different when you’re noble. You’re part of a direct chain of oaths leading to a count, so different rules and obligations apply. It is why having a noble patron willing to sponsor you is so important for a business.
Kafana thanked her and they headed up to meet the others. Wellington and Alderney had arrived, but Bulgaria wasn’t there. Probably. Kafana looked around suspiciously, to see if he was disguised as a server, or perhaps a potted plant.
Alderney: “Is anyone from Fra Gamal coming? I think Char would love seeing the haute couture, and I still owe ChocolateTrain a suit of armour. I need to get her measurements.”
Wellington: “I sent an invite, but the bloody gals are busy. This is the last of the seven days they took off from work, and they want to bag a second boss. Nastya caught back up with them and they’re all over level 40 now. They’re spending the day down in the swamp lands to the south where they’ve got a big quest.”
Kafana: “Oh dear. Muddy swamps? Char’s going to mutiny if CrimsonMoon keeps leading them into messy situations.”
Bungo: “It could be worse. She might have come to the auction.”
Alderney: “Hey! You all promised you’d never tell anyone about the slime incident. I edited it out of all the footage. It didn’t happen.”
Kafana: “Oh?”
Bungo made a wiggling gesture with one arm that Kafana couldn’t interpret, but turned it into stroking his hair when Alderney whirled to face him, fork in hand.